User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Counterpoint can't exist without a point. The opposites need each other.
The industrialists who purvey standardized ready-made amusements to the masses are doing their best to make you as much of a mechanical imbecile in your leisure as in your hours of work. But don’t let them. Make the effort of being human.
That's an exact description of the today pop culture.
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
Some persons try to be a part of the universal harmony and some want to become a counterpoint and some are just tone-deaf.
Rating: really liked it
Point Counter Point is a tragicomedy about a group of London intellectuals and/or members of the leisured class in the 1920s. Despite cynical and fun-making elements, Huxley allows his characters to formulate a series of profound and serious ideas, amongst them being:
(a) Why do people bother with worrying about liberty, democracy and politics, when they should just get on with living their lives
(b) It is easier to live the life of the intellectual, to live in a world purely of ideas, than it is to succeed in the art of life – to be on good terms with your colleagues, friends, spouse and children.
(c) Art is so much purer and more discriminating than life. In the sense that lurid accounts of orgies never discuss fatigue, boredom or hiccoughs
(d) You cannot properly separate the mind from the rest of the body. Any attempt to live a super-pure existence by living entirely in the mental will result in one becoming simply less than human
And so on.
Huxley is so sharp, so clever and so observant that it is a pleasure to be in his company. Yet he is so cutting about the intellectual pursuits that one can’t but feel guilty that one has the leisure and self-indulgence to be reading such a clever book. One should be undertaking some arduous proletariat task, or at least interacting with one’s fellow man. Or possibly indulging in one of those orgies (although, says Huxley, wickedness becomes as routine and uninteresting as anything else after a while).
So many little ideas, compared with Brave New World, which has one huge, overarching notion that there must be more to life than the simple pursuit of pleasure, or even happiness. But Point Counter Point seems much more natural, less clunky, than Brave New World’s 1932 attempt to be 24th century seems in 2008.
In summary, Point Counter Point is really good
Rating: really liked it
To this day, Aldous Huxley's "Point Counter Point" remains my favourite novel. The deepest corners of human nature -- that's where he goes, and that's where I haven't seen anyone else being able to.
The novel doesn't have a front-to-back storyline, a precise plot, or a main character. It starts off with Walter Bidlake's "trials and tribulations", only to extend to the entire social network of the London elite of the 1930s.
Huxley's versatility brings this writing to the status of "masterpiece", since all characters are explored (or they explore themselves) in great depth, from the flourishing façade to the darkest memories and secrets. The incredibly beautiful and superficial woman, the rough military leader with a soft spot, the cynical and politically involved, the rich, the one who despises the rich but secretly envies them -- name it, and you've got it there. And then there's the way they all influence each other's lives. It gives you the feeling you're looking at a complicated chess game, only from inside the pieces. It's clockwork, but it's also got the spontaneity you expect to find in the 20 years between the World Wars, when the world was left without any solid values and everyone was just thinking about tomorrow.
Rating: really liked it
'Point Counter Point' (1928) is a very typical Huxley: he presents fierce intellectual discussions, moral dilemma's, and lot's of characters eagerly making their own life miserable. There are connotations of satire, some sardonism, and in general blunt pessimism. Stylistically Huxley offers some really great chapters, though after a while the writing process becomes a bit tedious. In general though, this book is a stimulating read, portraying the egotistic aridity of intellectual circles. Huxley knew everything about them, and even modelled some of his characters to well known writers and thinkers, including himself. A succinct satire.
(rating 3.5 stars)
Rating: really liked it
Too many characters for a start. It felt like the novel kept beginning anew as yet another character was introduced. Point Counter Point is a novel of ideas. The trouble with ideas is they don't always age well. I only have to think of some of the ideas I had when I was nineteen. It often takes the form of intellectual debates between clever men in drinking clubs. This is a very masculine novel. Women have a background virtually nondescript role. Usually they're worrying about children or complaining about husbands. My feeling throughout was that Huxley doesn't have a natural gift for the novel. He's incredibly clever, psychologically and politically astute but sort of dry and heavy handed when it comes to dramatization. He's trying to bring ideas to life rather than people. He doesn't have that enlivening sensibility other writers of his time had - Woolf, Forster, Lawrence, Mansfield. Lawrence features as a character in this novel. If it's not tiresome listening to him preaching in his own novels here we get him doing the same preaching in someone else's novel. I was glad to get this over with.
Rating: really liked it
Huxley never disappointed me so far. The man was a very fine writer indeed. This is one of his longer works, I think it might even be the longest novel he has wrote. It is certainly a very complex work, something I'd recommend if you: a) can appreciate a fine difference between literature and a popular novel, b) are a fan of Huxley c) want to read something that might actually make to think.
Point Counter Point is a novel featuring a colourful cast of characters. You're bound to love some, and hate the others, but they will all seem very much real to you. I read somewhere that Huxley based his characters on real people he knew, and if that is true, that explains why they feel so real. Long story short- a great cast of characters. Now, I've said there are many characters in this one- and there are as many stories as they are characters. The stories are often interwoven. There is no central plot here, but there is a lot of philosophical writing. This book is intelligently written and every debate is worth reading about. Some debates seem to continue through different stories. I immensely enjoyed following them for I do love a good debate. However, if you're looking for a more standard novel, you might end up disappointed. There is no traditional plot and no grand finish. The books merits lie mainly with intelligent writing and an excellent psychological analysis characters- and that is fine by me.
I borrowed this novel twice from the library. For some reason I thought that I haven't finished this novel. Reading it again, I realized that I had finished it. I think there wasn't another Huxley's book that I confused it with. Possibly Island, yes it might be that one. I think I started to read Island at some point, stopped and then it took me a while to pick it up and finish it. So, I ended up reading Point Counter Point twice, which is no tragedy as it is a wonderful novel. If I remember well, I had read Point Counter Point in one go. I didn't mind rereading it either, that's for sure. Nothing much to add this time around, I do still think it is an excellent novel.
Rating: really liked it
From Wikipedia:
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, especially in the Baroque. The term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning "point against point", i.e. "note against note".
Book titles are important.
In common parlance, counterpoint means one thing in contrast to another, often juxtaposed to create a pleasing contrast. In music, it is one of the main techniques in an orchestra to create a harmonious polyphonic experience. It is not by coincidence that this novel starts with a fairly detailed description of a music concert:
Meanwhile the music played on—Bach's Suite in B minor, for flute and strings. Young Tolley conducted with his usual inimitable grace, bending in swan-like undulations from the loins, and tracing luscious ara-besques on the air with his waving arms, as though he were dancing to the music. A dozen anonymous fiddlers and 'cellists scraped at his bidding. And the great Pongilconi glueily kissed his flute. He blew across the mouth hole and a cylindrical air column vibrated ; Bach's meditations filled the Roman quadrangle. In the opening largo John Sebastian had, with the help of Pongileoni's snout and the air column, made a state¬ment : There are grand things in the world, noble things ; there are men born kingly ; there are real conquerors, intrinsic lords of the earth. But of an earth that is, oh I complex and multitudinous, he had gone on to reflect in the fugal allegro. You seem to have found the truth ; clear, definite, unmistakable, it is announced by the violins; you have it, you triumphantly hold it. But it slips out of your grasp to present itself in a new aspect among the 'cellos and yet again in terms of Pongileoni's vibrating air column. The parts live their separate lives; they touch, their paths cross, they combine for a moment to create a seemingly final and perfected harmony, only to break apart again. Each is always alone and separate and individual. ' I am I,' asserts the violin ; the world revolves round me.' Round me,' calls the 'cello. Round me,' the flute insists. And all are equally right and equally wrong ; and none of them will listen to the others.
In the human fugue there are eighteen hundred million parts. The resultant noise means something perhaps to the statistician, nothing to the artist. It is only by considering one or two parts at a time that the artist can understand anything. Here, for example, is one particular part ; and John Sebastian puts the case. The Rondeau begins, exquisitely and simply melodious, almost a folk-song. It is a young girl singing to herself of love, in solitude, tenderly mournful. A young girl singing among the hills, with the clouds drifting over-head. But solitary as one of the floating clouds, a poet had been listening to her song. The thoughts that it provoked in him are the Sarabande that follows the Rondeau. His is a slow and lovely meditation on the beauty (in spite of squalor and stupidity), the profound goodness (in spite of all the evil), the oneness (in spite of such bewildering diversity) of the world. It is a beauty, a goodness, a unity that no intellectual research can discover, that analysis dispels, but of whose reality the spirit is from time to time suddenly and overwhelmingly convinced. A girl singing to herself under the clouds suffices to create the certitude. Even a fine morning is enough. Is it illusion or the revelation of profoundest truth ? Who knows ? Pongileoni blew, the fiddlers drew their rosined horse-hair across the stretched intestines of lambs ; through the long Sarabande the poet slowly meditated his lovely and consoling certitude.
The reason I quoted this long passage in its entirety is because it encapsulates what the novel is about, in a nutshell - an orchestra of similar, disparate and often conflicting ideas, expressed through the lives and thoughts of a handful artists and intellectuals. In its 400+ thickly populated pages, there is no "story" in the traditional sense: we have a bunch of mostly unlikable and rather unrealistic characters going about their lives, talking philosophy till about 80% of the book, when everything suddenly moves into frenzied action with the goofy speed of a silent movie and ends as abruptly as one. But then, the author does not want to entertain us with a tale - he sincerely wants to screw up our minds with ideas.
A novel of ideas is never naturalistic - because real people don't conduct long, lucid and expository conversations while eating, drinking and fornicating. Our conversations are always confused and disjointed. This is what Philip Qarles, one of the characters in the novel who happens to be a writer, has to say about the "novel of ideas":
The great defect of the novel of ideas is that it's a made-up affair. Necessarily; for people who can reel off neatly formulated notions aren't quite real; they're slightly monstrous. Living with monsters become rather tiresome in the long run.
The remarkable thing that Huxley has managed is that he has made living with monsters not only non-tiresome, but enjoyable.
***
This novel was published in 1928, towards the end of the decade called the "Roaring Twenties" when the world blossomed into a prosperous bubble after the First World War (a bubble which was to disastrously burst in 1929 with the Great Depression, which would drag on until 1939 and the Second World War). It was a time of great intellectual and cultural energy (albeit confined to the big cities and its intellectual elite) and the rampant clash of conflicting ideas; ideas which are embodied through various characters by Huxley. Thus we have the staid and unemotional Philip Qarles representing the cold scientific temper; the hypocritical Burlap who represents a sentimental Christian piety; the wastrel Spandrell, who represents a sort of degraded Nihilism; Illidge, the proletarian who represents Marxism; and Mark Rampion who represents a sort of broad humanism pitted against all these "non-human" philosophies. In addition we have a host of other characters who through their personalities present a cross-section of the glittering cultural life of London, and also its dark underbelly.
The blurb says:"Through the pages of
Point CounterPoint - lightly disguised and readily distinguishable - move D H Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and her husband John Middleton Murry, and Aldous Huxley himself." I guess I am too ignorant about literature or history to recognise them; but I actually found the characters fascinating, though not endearing. Huxley has a cynical eye, and he verges on the Wodehousian when making character sketches.
This is not a fast read. It is to be savoured slowly, so that symphony of the ideas gently seep into one.
Rating: really liked it
Habit is as fatal to a sense of wrong-doing as to active enjoyment. After a few years the converted or sceptical Jew, the Westernized Hindu, can eat their pork and beef with an equanimity which to their still-believing brothers seems brutally cynical. It is the same with the habitual debauchee. Actions which at first seemed thrilling in their intrinsic wickedness become after a certain number of repetitions morally neutral. A little disgusting, perhaps; for the practice of most vices is followed by depressing physiological reactions; but no longer wicked, because so ordinary. It is difficult for a routine to seem wicked.”Dogs don't fare so well in the novels of Huxley. It's a family legacy, perhaps. My mood is illuminated by wisecracks about vivisection. Whatever the cause, the images are striking, though Point Counterpoint is a different kettle than either Eyeless in Gaza or Brave New World. This is a softer cloth, a farce upon which ideas are allowed to percolate. It appears closer to Waugh's Scoop than any attempt to portray the way we live (now). It should be noted that over a third of the book depicts a party, one which isn't really of consequence yet the canvas keeps unrolling to accommodate the cast. Most of the characters are modeled upon actual artists and politicians, though I lack the interest to explore. Of course Oswald Mosley is easy to spot. I thought that the situation might resonate in light of the week's Impeachment. It didn't.
Rating: really liked it
A phrase like "novel of ideas" sounds so ponderous and leaden-- you'll not find many who liked The Magic Mountain as much as I did, but I'll readily admit it was tough going-- but Huxley proves that a novel of ideas can be on the contrary, witty, playful, and as bitchy as a gin-sodden Truman Capote. Nearly every page has a line that's a total keeper:
"The rush to books and universities is like the rush to the public house. People want to drown their realization of the difficulties of living properly in this grotesque contemporary world, they want to forget their own deplorable inefficiency as artists in life."You got me, Aldous, you got me.
Rating: really liked it
Point Counter Point (1928) is the third Huxley novel I have read in close succession, following Crome Yellow (1921) and Eyeless in Gaza (1936). It is far closer to
Eyeless in Gaza than to
Crome Yellow in character: vast in scale, structurally complex, hugely ambitious in terms of the philosophical ideas it chooses to wrangle. Its great theme is (in the words of the epigraph, by Fulke Greville) the “wearisome condition of humanity,” as a wrenching cohabitation of “passion and reason, self-division’s cause.”
PCP has a broader cast-list than
Eyeless, and is organized contrapuntally, as the title suggests, with a series of interconnected narrative threads, none especially privileged (although the novelist Philip Quarles, who seems an ironic self-portrait, can perhaps be seen as the work’s focalizer-in-chief). The presence of Quarles in the novel allows Huxley to spell out his artistic credo, though he does so with a breezy self-deprecation that seems to me characteristic. I like this astute twinned self-justification and self-critique, for example:
Novel of ideas. The character of each personage must be implied, as far as possible, in the ideas of which he is the mouthpiece; in so far as theories are rationalizations of sentiments, instincts, dispositions of soul, this is feasible. The chief defect of the novel of ideas is that you must write about people who have ideas to express—which excludes all but about .01 of the human race. Hence the real, the congenital novelists don’t write such books, but then I never pretended to be a congenital novelist.The specimens of the ideas-ridden .01% of the human race with whom Huxley presents us in this novel are often highly entertaining. I liked the eccentric amateur scientist Lord Edward Tantamount and his bitter, radical, working-class assistant, Frank Illidge; the hypocritical, sex-obsessed Christian mystic and literary magazine editor, Denis Burlap, with his seductive “Sodoma smile”; mercurial, amoral flapper Lucy Tantamount; and Mussoliniesque
übermensch Everard Webley, hot pursuer of Philip’s semi-neglected wife Elinor.
Some of these characters are patently portraits of Huxley’s contemporaries, in way that must have increased the spice of the book for its earliest readers. Mark Rampion, fiery spokesman for nature and instinct over reason, is easy to spot as Huxley’s close friend D. H. Lawrence, and I was interested to read online that the man-eating Lucy was based on Nancy Cunard, with whom Huxley had an affair. I also liked the sketch of the sensual, cynical, lionized elderly ego-monster of an artist, John Bidlake, supposedly based on Augustus John.
Huxley’s characters are distinctly of their volatile historical moment—that’s part of the novel’s fascination—and yet the ideas and life philosophies and political theories they spin for themselves are not lacking in relevance for our own times. Huxley’s insights into the ways in which people’s thinking is shaped by their circumstances and history and their physical selves and their relation to their bodies—sex is very central in the novel—are also at times very astute.
PCP is a dark and unforgiving satire, with little by way of personal or social redemption in view at the end, unlike
Eyeless in Gaza. That doesn't make it a depressing read, though—far from it. With its densely interwoven, tragicomic plotlines, its rich gamut of characters, its fizzing dialogue, it reads rather like a very, very, very upmarket soap opera. It's not hard to see why it was a
succès de scandale in its day.
Rating: really liked it
Bad people doing bad things, but in a very witty way. That is a brief, if incomplete, summary of Aldous Huxley's novel, Point Counter Point.
It is more broadly a "novel of ideas" with a novelist of ideas, Philip Quarles, at its center. Quarles is a withdrawn, cerebral man, ill at ease with the everyday world and its emotions. He is surrounded by friends and family whose lives are like those of the monsters that Philip writes about in his journal. Just as Philip decides to structure his novel on the contrapuntal techniques of music (think Bach and Beethoven) the novel Huxley has written is structured in the same way. We are presented with an opening overture of more than one-hundred-fifty pages at a dinner party that serves as an introduction to most of the characters. The remainder of the novel intersperses scenes from their lives, letters from lovers and most interesting, the writings of Philip Quarles, who with his wife spends most of the first half of the novel returning from India and who is the closest to a protagonist that we get. While there is a bit of a literary explosion near the end, this is more a novel of the daily lives of London sophisticates in the 1920s. It catalogues their alternately sordid and ludicrous (sometimes both) erotic adventures, which generally end unhappily.
I particularly enjoyed the wealth of references to literature and philosophy, Huxley's polymathic mind shows through on every page. Among the literary references was the use of Dickens in a way that captures one of his essential character traits, "the appearance of Dickensian young-girlishness" (p. 19). Overall, I found the play of wit and ideas compelling, enough to bear with the bad people and their antics.
Rating: really liked it
Huxley is quite the literary enigma. He is the progenitor of a style of expression that is thoroughly unique and exhaustive in its presentation of the matter at hand and this itself prevents any form of imitation by other lesser competent literary mortals. Yet the only deterrent to Huxley is perhaps Huxley himself. Over indulgence is undeniably his most persistent arch nemesis and it befuddles the authors best efforts in quite a lot of his creations and is well demonstrated here in PCP. The notion is arguable indeed but one cannot quite construct a 400+ novel merely out of a compulsion to isolate and vivisect certain episodic and grudgingly personal philosophies. A short story would have sufficed for this yet Huxley pompously persuades you with a brilliantly structured opening sequence and then abandons you in a confounding melodrama of rambling psychologies and distasteful diversions. This was not expected of the same author whose keenness of perception edited his philosophic and metaphysical outings with such unrelenting effectiveness in the laudable Brave New World and the morbid Ape and Essence. Social criticism is thus an aphrodisiac which Huxley cannot quite forego and yet he is seduced into excesses such as PCP and the drab Those Barren Leaves from which he just cannot liberate himself. No doubt, I am still in awe of the manner in which Huxley struggles passionately against his Achilles Heel and describes the music of Bach, how he deconstructs Romanticisim through Rampion, how he he enamors with an unflinchingly accurate portrayal of dissipating love...and yet I just couldnt proceed beyond page 201. A case of Huxley being slayed by his own ambitions.
Rating: really liked it
Point Counter Point, the title says what the book is about - the double bind that humans are in. The quote on the frontispiece is by Fulke Greville. "Oh, wearisome condition of humanity, Born under one law, to another bound,…"
I read Point Counter Point about ten year ago. With novels that have a vast cast of characters, I started keeping a folded sheet of paper as a book mark adding all the names of the characters as they are introduced into the story so as to remember who is who, and I started writing down lines, quotes, words, not forgetting the page number!
Books like P. C. P. are character and ideas based, with the author's philosophy sown into the tale. I don't remember too much of the story, I remember the characters and some scenes. So the notes I kept while reading P. C. P. are a great memory jogger. Looking back I'm surprised at the amount of notes.
The situation towards the end of the book with Spandrell and Illidge and the dead body of Everard Webley is unique and hilarious, describing the planning and removal of the corpse, one of those 'physical burst out laughing' moments. I loved the book.
Rating: really liked it
Huxley is one of those important writers that are rarely read, outside of his famous work "Brave New World." That is an important work and it is easy to see why it is so well known, and well-read. But it is Point Counter Point that is the far more important, and more significant work.
The book is largely about two families--the Bidlake's and the Quarles' along with their circle of friends and relations. The two families are tied together through the marriage of Philip and Elinor, who begin the novel in India, but return to England where the majority of the novel takes place.
Huxley is an ambitious and skilled writer. He is interested in how what one thinks affects how one lives. The psychology and the motivations of his characters are central to the story. This is apparent from the outset, as Huxley shows how Walter Bidlake is torn between obligations he has to his pregnant mistress and his lust for a new lover. He is burdened with guilt and misgivings, but in the end, his lusts are too great to overcome and he surrenders himself in a manner that is quite disconnected from the way he lives the rest of his life.
It is fascinating that he recognizes how fruitless and joyless his affair will be, and it is indeed so. It is a disgusting, jealous kind of affection--far from the kind of contented love found in marriage. Meanwhile, his pregnant mistress moves from jealous anger to contented sadness in watching her lover give himself to a joyless, lustful affair. Surprisingly, she finds contentment in Christian piety.
Through Walter and his new mistress, Lucy Tantamount, we are introduced to the wastrel, Maurice Spandrell. Spandrell is an interesting character, as he is a contrarian--a materalist with spiritualists, a spiritualist with materialists, etc. But at his core, he wants to have a God to believe in, but failed to believe. This conflict of visions drives the climax of the book.
The book is primarily concerned with the connection between belief and behavior. How ought we to think, and how ought we to behave? In this regard, Huxley is a prophetic in understanding the absolute failure of the materialistic worldview. He recognizes the brutality of a world without God. He recognizes that morality exists and binds us. All the characters are ultimately constrained with feelings of guilt--even those that do not believe it possible, or believe they can resist such feelings.
But the novel ultimately fails to satisfy, as the book ends with a rather despicable weaseling his way out of a contractual commitment with one woman to allow himself the freedom to pursue a sexual commitment to another. The only truly happy people in the book are left in their happiness and do not reappear later.
But this is one of those rare books that takes the mask off of the materialistic worldview so pervasive in the modern world. It is a vicious thing.
Rating: really liked it
Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
This is a monumental novel that I must admit to have rejected years ago.
How foolish one can be.
Aldous Huxley has dazzled me with:
- Brave New World, The Doors of Perception and now this masterpiece.
It is a complex work, with complicated characters and surprising events...
There is even a murder, a few deaths and some love affairs.
Astonishing points of view are expressed on almost anything
From God to the music of Beethoven, from Saint Francis to Tolstoy.
Speaking of Saint Francis, there is a personage that attacks the said Francis with aplomb.
He was sick, licking the wounds of lepers for his benefit.
This Saint did not cure those sick people, he was just enjoying himself.
Perhaps I should be ashamed to admit that I found the remarks funny, albeit in a tasteless, cruel and exaggerated way.
John Bidlake seems to be towering over this account, at least in terms of seniority, if not with his status as the leonine creator of old.
A lover with energy, charm, talent, success and idiosyncrasies he is likeable...up to a point.
Walter Bidlake is one of my favorites, the son of the aforementioned painter and trapped in a disastrous affair with Lucy Tantamount, while also cohabiting with a pregnant Marjorie.
I just realized that I have to give up on the other characters, even if this mix is fascinating.
The dinamic of their relationships was hard to follow sometimes, but this chef d'oeuvre is extremely satisfying.
The dialogues are marvelous and the themes are serious and looked at from unusual angles.
Tolstoy is dismissed as something of an old fool and I happen to have read The Intellectuals by Paul Johnson which shows that despicable side of the Russian writer...and a good number of others:
- Ibsen, Hemingway, Rousseau...
One statement that intrigued me was, I hope similar to what I put here:
- The search for The Truth is not really "noble".
- It is just like any other occupation.
- Indeed, many of those who think about that are ordinary or worse.
It was in the line of challenging Saint Francis, the music of Beethoven which is too wonderful, too heavenly.
And there are characters that challenge most accepted points of view
